Falling for you
by Tigerlillyth
Summary: It was spring when they met again. And it was snowing petals. He had always wanted to protect her from everything, but he hadn't been able to and Takagi-kun's hopes to always be with her were disrupted that very moment their kiss ended. But infinity comes in many ways...


Cherry blossoms on my path

Time is a cruel thing. It does what it wants with you, really. You could be walking down a street lost in thoughts and your whole life could flash before your eyes. Then again, it could also give an eternal second of pain when your heart needed love the most.

Takagi-kun had long since given up on time.

Much like he had given up on everything else that had made him him.

After quitting his job he had moved back to his parents, into the little island where he had gone to middleschool and there he helped them with their chores. They never really asked why he had chosen to live like this and he never talked about it, so it was a solemn agreement between them that they accepted.

He had become silent, retreated to his own world of thoughts and rarely spoke, although he was always friendly to everybody who adressed him. He had started writing messages to himself again too, always sitting somewhere in the countryside all by himself, staring at his phone with a solemn and sometimes painful expression.

Evertime he walked past the cherry trees in spring he smiled to himself.

However inside of him, everything broke more with each smile, a sad smile with the burden of the three lives he had lived and hurt with, the remnants of which never leaving him.

 _She_ never left him.

When he was all alone, up on that hill near the sea where they had both watched the sunset and the moon becoming one in universe, he wondered what if.

The kiss he could never forget.

Bue he would have loved her all the same even if it hadn't happened.

Maybe he was going crazy, maybe a part of him, the very same part that that broken inside of him that winter night when she had called him to say they couldn't go to the same highschool, had now finally shattered into the million pieces tugging at his heart evertime he walked past a cherry tree in spring.

She was everywhere, everywhere he looked he saw something, _anything_ that reminded him of her. Sometimes, he'd trive into Tokyo just to wander the old streets where they had lived and look at their old houses to wander in illusions.

It was spring when they met again.

And it was snowing petals once more.

He was smiling and she was crying and the only word he could utter was 'Akari'.

When she fell into his arms, for that moment, time granted them their own little place where nothing could touch and harm them.

They talked long after the sun had come down and changed places with the moon, walking down the alleys of their memories and it felt like their hearts had never been apart, not by a centimetre. But he had seen the ring on her finger and she had told him about her engagement and he had understood what he had known since their kiss, that this was how it was supposed to be and would, although the aching in his chest only started when she waved him goodbye under the tree that had brought them together again, with a promise to maybe soon call.

When he arrived home, it had started raining and he was wet from head to toe. But that way at least no one saw the tears he shed alone in his room.

The rain continued for the whole of next week and the entire time of that period Takagi-kun stayed in his room. After a few hours his parents gave up on trying to console him and left him, once in a while his mother however brought him something to eat, just to find him on his bed staring far beyond anything. He never talked about it with anyone.

On the last day of the rain period, when he finally managed to mechanically get up, he got into his car and drove into town. If Akari was getting married he at least wanted to give her a nice present for congratulations.

He had never expected her to be walking down the same street as he was and he didn't know how to react when she saw him and waved from the other side of the pavement. But she started to walk towards him and crossed the road, eyes seaching for him with that beautiful, soft smile that tortured him in his dreams.

His voice sounded hollow to him as he reached out a hand and called to her, but she didn't hear and the rain was pouring mercilessly.

When he had jumped, he didn't know. He just remembered when he held her in his arms that he had promised himself to always be there for her and utterly failed.

The 'I love you' he had never said came easily over his lips now as they fell to the ground with five centimetres per second and the car's lights she hadn't seen coming drew nearer.

Somewhere in the distance, lightning struck and an old cherry tree in full blossom shook with thunder's might. A tree so old it had witnessed many things and had also been the only one to have seen that first and last kiss between the loyal boy and the gentle girl. When it was struck in two, the wood sighed like it had been relieved from a burden so heavy and the rain soon put out the flames spitting onto the rosen flowers.

They were buried on the same graveyard next to each other at the end of spring when people started to wear lighter cardigans and less layers. Over time, another tree would grow to give them shade in summer and protection in winter, blooming every spring to show their families the way.

The old tree that had been split in half recovered well and after a few years it began growing again, the two separate trunks now moving closer and closer together. When seasons changed again and it grew more you nearly couldn't see that it had once been split, for the one that had become two, entwined itself now with its other half, embracing it tightly all around, becoming one once again.


End file.
